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Guide · Churches and schools

Web Captioner is gone: free ways to put live captions on a church screen or into OBS (2026)

By Blink Brief · Updated  · How pages are made

Web Captioner shut down on October 31, 2023, and webcaptioner.com now forwards to a page that says "Web Captioner has sunset." It was a web page that used Chrome's built-in speech recognition and showed the words as big captions, and a browser page that does the same still costs nothing. For captions inside an OBS livestream, use an OBS plugin instead: the OBS Closed Captioning Plugin, which uses Google's speech service, or LocalVocal, which runs on your own computer.

Short answer

  • Projector or TV in the room: a full-screen captions page in Chrome or Edge, fed by the pastor's microphone.
  • OBS livestream: the OBS Closed Captioning Plugin 0.33 (the stable release, for OBS 30 to 32; native captions tested on Twitch, on-screen captions anywhere) or LocalVocal 0.6.2 (Whisper on your computer; captions on screen, in a file, or in the stream).
  • Built into the laptop: Windows 11 and Mac Live Captions caption the microphone, in a bar or a window rather than full screen.

What happened to Web Captioner

Web Captioner's README on GitHub says it "existed at webcaptioner.com from 2017 until October 31, 2023." On that day its maker, Curt Grimes, shut it down and published the source code; GitHub shows the repository archived on 5 November 2023. When we checked on 3 November 2026, webcaptioner.com answered with a permanent redirect (HTTP 308) to curtgrimes.com, which says "Web Captioner has sunset." The first question on that page is "ChatGPT sent me here": AI assistants still send people to the tool.

From its README, Web Captioner:

  • used the browser's Web Speech API, "Focused on Google Chrome support only"
  • gave a caption link to show on other devices or in streaming software
  • connected to vMix, YouTube, FAB Subtitler, Dropbox, Zoom, and OBS Studio ("Some integrations are incomplete or broken")
  • sent captions to Chromecast devices and replaced words it often misheard
  • had a language setting "but no translation between languages"

Grimes points users to "built-in speech-to-text tools available on many of today's devices". You can run the open source code yourself, but the README warns of "outdated dependencies" (Node 12.2.0 and Python 2), so it isn't a fix for this Sunday.

Captions on the projector or TV in the room

Most churches used Web Captioner for the screen in the sanctuary: a laptop, Chrome, and large white words on black. A captions page that uses the same browser speech recognition does that today. Blink Brief's free Live Captions tool is one, with no account. Here is how it lines up with what Web Captioner did:

Web Captioner had The free Live Captions tool
Chrome's speech recognitionChrome or Edge; Safari on some Macs and iPhones; not Firefox
A language setting, no translation32 spoken languages and variants, no translation
Caption appearance settingsText size 24 to 160 px, dark or light background, auto-scroll, full screen
Word replacementsNone
A caption link for other screens, ChromecastNone: the captions show on the laptop's screen only
vMix, OBS, YouTube, and Zoom integrationsNone: no caption stream for OBS
An experimental SRT exportNone: the captions disappear when you close the page

Web Captioner's features from its README; the tool's from its page, both read on 3 November 2026.

  1. On the laptop that drives the projector, open the tool in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.
  2. Choose the Spoken language, press Start captions, and allow the microphone.
  3. Press Full screen (or F), set Text size, and pick a Dark or Light background.
  4. If recognition pauses after a long silence, such as a song, the page starts it again on its own.

The audio goes where it went with Web Captioner: to the browser's speech service. Chrome may send it to Google, and Edge to Microsoft, to turn it into text, so the laptop needs the internet. Blink Brief never receives the audio or the captions. A small "Made with Blink Brief" line sits in a corner of the captions.

We tested it on 3 November 2026 in Google Chrome 156 on a Mac, with a recorded reading (a synthetic voice) fed in as the microphone. "Today's reading is from the Gospel of John, chapter three, verse sixteen" appeared as "today's reading is from the Gospel of John chapter 3 verse 16": no capitals or punctuation, numbers as digits.

Check this computer for live captions

To check by hand:

  1. Open the Live Captions tool in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. Firefox doesn't support live speech recognition; Safari works on some Macs and iPhones.
  2. Press Start captions and allow the microphone when the browser asks.
  3. Say a sentence from where the speaker will stand. If words appear, the laptop is ready. If the page says the microphone is blocked or missing, allow it from the icon in the address bar, or choose the input in your system's sound settings.

Captions in an OBS livestream: two plugins

Viewers at home need the captions inside the stream. Two free, open source OBS plugins (both GPL-2.0) do that without a browser page.

OBS Closed Captioning Plugin: Google's speech service

  • What it is: "closed captioning via Google Cloud Speech Recognition API as a standalone OBS plugin". The latest stable release is 0.33, from 15 October 2025: it "Supports OBS 32", needs OBS 30 or later, and runs on Windows (64-bit), Mac (Intel and Apple silicon), and Linux, which its author calls untested.
  • OBS 33: OBS 33.0 came out on 23 October 2026, after 0.33. The only build that says it supports it is 0.34 (9 October 2026, "Supports OBS 32 and above"), and the Releases page marks it Pre-release. On OBS 30 to 32, install 0.33.
  • Where viewers see captions: it uses Twitch's built-in captions, and the README says it is "Only tested on Twitch.tv". For YouTube or Facebook, use its "Open Caption support via OBS Text Sources", which puts the words into the video itself.
  • Transcripts: it saves the stream's captions as an .srt or .txt file.
  • Limits: no native captions for "languages with foreign character sets like Japanese or Russian" (on-screen captions and transcripts still work). It doesn't work in Streamlabs OBS, and doesn't appear to work with the AMD hardware encoder on Windows.
  1. Close OBS and download the 0.33 zip for your system from the plugin's Releases page, where it is marked Latest.
  2. Windows: copy the obs-plugins folder into the OBS folder (usually C:\Program Files\obs-studio\). Mac: copy cloud-closed-captions.plugin into the plugins folder of the folder that File › Show Settings Folder opens.
  3. Start OBS and choose Tools › Cloud Closed Captions.
  4. In the Captions Preview window, click Settings and set Caption Source to the OBS source that carries only the pastor's microphone.

LocalVocal: speech recognition on your own computer

  • What it is: an OBS plugin that runs OpenAI's Whisper model through whisper.cpp. Its README promises "no cloud costs, no network" and says "all data stays on your machine".
  • Versions: 0.6.2 came out on 21 April 2026, for Windows 10 and 11 (generic, NVIDIA, and AMD builds), macOS 12 to 15 on Intel or Apple silicon, and Ubuntu 22.04. "No GPU required", the README says.
  • Where viewers see captions: on screen through a text source, in a .txt or .srt file, or sent "on a RTMP stream to e.g. YouTube, Twitch".
  • Languages: transcription in 100 languages, and translation of the captions into major languages.

Pick by where you stream. On Twitch, the Closed Captioning plugin's native captions let each viewer turn them on or off. On YouTube, either plugin's on-screen captions work, and LocalVocal can also send captions in the stream. With no reliable internet in the booth, LocalVocal is the one that doesn't need it.

Windows Live Captions and PowerPoint subtitles: when they're enough

  • Windows 11 Live Captions (version 22H2 and later): press Windows key + Ctrl + L, then turn on Include microphone audio under Preferences; it is off each time live captions starts. Dock it Above screen or Below screen. Microsoft says it processes audio on the device and works offline. Enough when a bar along the top or bottom of the projected picture is readable from the pews.
  • Mac Live Captions (Apple silicon only): System Settings › Accessibility › Live Captions, then the microphone icon in its window. A window you can resize, not full-screen captions.
  • PowerPoint subtitles (Microsoft 365): Slide Show › Subtitle Settings, choose the Spoken Language and the Subtitle Language, then Always Use Subtitles. They show only during a slide show, need "a reliable internet connection", and "Your speech utterances will be sent to Microsoft". Enough when the sermon slides stay on screen the whole time.

Step-by-step settings for each, with what the room sees, are in live captions on a projector or TV from a laptop.

Microphone and sound-desk setup for clear captions

  • Use a feed, not the room. Send the pulpit microphone from a spare output on the sound desk into a USB audio interface on the captions laptop, and choose that interface as the laptop's input. A laptop microphone in the booth hears the room's echo.
  • Speech only. Leave the band out of that output; the captions are for what is said.
  • In OBS, give the plugin a source that is only the pastor's microphone, as the Closed Captioning plugin's README advises.
  • Rehearse. Play last week's sermon recording through the desk and read the captions from the back row before Sunday.

The wiring from the desk to a computer is shown step by step in the church translation guide.

When a church needs translation, not captions

Web Captioner never translated, and neither does the free captions page: both show the language being spoken. If members follow Spanish or Korean better than English, you need a translation service that puts their language on their phones. The church translation guide explains the setup, church translation apps compared lists prices, and there are guides for Spanish and Korean–English services.

Our product · in development

Blink Captions: listeners scan one QR code and read the sermon in their own language on their own phone. Planned price $5 per hour per language, or $99/month.

Join the early list

Questions

What happened to Web Captioner?

Its maker, Curt Grimes, shut it down on October 31, 2023, and released its source code on GitHub the same day. webcaptioner.com now redirects to his site, which says "Web Captioner has sunset."

Is there a free Web Captioner alternative?

For captions on a screen in the room, a captions page in Chrome or Edge does the same job, such as the free Live Captions tool. Windows 11 and Macs with Apple silicon have Live Captions built in. For captions in an OBS stream, the OBS Closed Captioning Plugin and LocalVocal are free.

Can I use Web Captioner with OBS or vMix?

No. Its OBS and vMix integrations ended with the site. In OBS, a captions plugin takes its place: the OBS Closed Captioning Plugin (Google's speech service) or LocalVocal (runs on your computer).

How do we show live captions during a church service?

Send the pastor's microphone from the sound desk into the laptop that drives the projector, open a captions page in Chrome or Edge, choose the spoken language, press Start, and switch to full screen with large text. Test it with last week's sermon first.

Is there a Web Captioner Chrome extension?

Web Captioner's README describes a website, not an extension. Chrome's own Live Caption (More › Settings › Accessibility) captions audio that plays in Chrome, which helps with a video but not with a person speaking in the room.

Sources

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